How the Monkeypox Outbreak Became a Pandemic Response Success Story

Just as fears about COVID-19 were finally abating and the world seemed to be reaching a new state of normal, media outlets began publishing stories about the rise of monkeypox. The name of the disease alone plays on many people’s deep-seated fears about virulent foreign pathogens, and the advertised symptoms sounded much more severe than those of any coronavirus. As a result, much of the country began to experience panic regarding a new wave of outbreaks and death rates that would keep the world shut down interminably.

And then, in a matter of weeks, monkeypox was no longer an issue. How did we overcome monkeypox, and how can we use these tactics when the next new global pandemic rears its head?

Monkeypox Already Had a Viable Vaccine and Treatment Strategy

For the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers knew precious little about the virus itself. They identified the type of virus — a coronavirus — which gave them some insight into its modes of transmission and infection. Still, it took a frustratingly long amount of time for the scientific and medical communities to have any definitive answers about what COVID is and how it behaves, and to some extent, we are still struggling to answer those questions in their entirety.

The same is simply not true for monkeypox. Long before this year’s outbreak, monkeypox was a well-known and understood disease. First identified in the middle of the 20th century, monkeypox has been found to be endemic, or consistently present, in no fewer than 10 African countries. Though the disease has not before reached Western countries in any significant number, African researchers have nonetheless enjoyed decades to study the virus.

As a result, when monkeypox began emerging in America early in 2022, Western scientists and doctors had plenty of established material to guide their response. Even before the first U.S. case, the medical community knew of a viable vaccine that was more or less readily available to anyone at risk of contracting the disease. Likewise, public health professionals understood the typical course of the disease and could make recommendations to ease individuals’ suffering through effective treatment.

Undoubtedly, foreknowledge of the monkeypox disease contributed to our ability to rout a true epidemic — but it is not necessarily a useful guideline to help fight the new pandemic viruses that will emerge in the future. Still, early identification of the disease, and early diagnosis of individual cases, were key to keeping the outbreak small, so anyone who experiences disease or discomfort should schedule an online doctor’s visit, just in case it is the start of a new outbreak.

Monkeypox Was Always Less Virulent Than COVID

Monkeypox is a cousin of smallpox, and it behaves in a similar manner, though it is notoriously less deadly. The virus causes an infected person to develop a rash or lesions — called pox — that can be painful or itchy. Only direct contact with the pox themselves, or direct contact with bodily secretions like saliva or mucus, will cause the virus to spread from an infected person to another host. Even then, a single exposure is unlikely to result in a new infection; the virus requires frequent close contact between individuals to spread. As a result, monkeypox mostly spread between intimate partners before knowledge of the disease was well-known, and preventing and avoiding transmission became simple once public health officials educated their communities about symptoms and spread.

Such is not the case for COVID or for other viruses likely to develop into pandemics. The first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic were fraught with uncertainty regarding how the virus was transmitted. Even once researchers understood that COVID-19 was transmitted through respiratory droplets, preventing transmission became exceedingly difficult, as interior spaces tend to require individuals to share air and thus risk infection.

Researchers have determined that the R0 — the figure that explains how many additional infections are likely to result from one infection — for COVID-19 is somewhere between 1.4 and 2.4, whereas the R0 for monkeypox is less than 1. Thus, from the beginning, the monkeypox outbreak was sure to be easier to control.

Monkeypox Primarily Affected a Specific Community

Monkeypox spreads through close, intimate and repeated contact between individuals. As a result, the spread of monkeypox tends to be limited to groups that regularly engage in close, intimate contact. In the United States, monkeypox primarily affected the LGBTQ community. On one hand, this was devastating to a group that already suffers from rampant injustice and inequality; on the other hand, the limited scope of the epidemic made it much easier for public health officials to disseminate reliable information, administer vaccines and halt the transmission of the disease.

We can only hope that the conditions surrounding the next epidemic disease are similar to those we experienced with monkeypox. Knowing more about the disease from the start, having viable treatment and prevention options, enjoying a low transmission rate and confining the spread of the disease to a small group are all ways to fight viruses and other health issues with great success.